


drop

by seventhstar



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, adhara, barian!akari
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-14
Updated: 2015-02-14
Packaged: 2018-03-12 07:51:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3349376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventhstar/pseuds/seventhstar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[barian!akari au.] adhara does not know what it is to be human.</p>
            </blockquote>





	drop

it happens quite suddenly. she is riding her bike home from the store. sweat is dripping down her forehead. music is blasting in her ears.

she never sees the car coming. she’s dead before she hits the ground. the end.

+++++

it is not the end.

+++++

adhara does not know what it is to be barian.

she is like them — hard, her face marked with a long raised ridge running down between her eyes — but she is not. there is no armor on her body, no sharp angles to her limbs, no menace to her at all.

the others can tell whole stories when they meet each other’s eyes, but adhara is still learning this language and must rely on her voice. she watches them mostly, tries to pick them apart and put them back together in a way that will let her reconstruct herself in their image.

durbe the clever one who spends too much time staring off the edges of cliffs, his eyes sad. mizael the proud one who can’t hide his concern for the others behind his rough words. gilag who is silent but not stupid; alit who lusts for battle but lusts for defeat more. and vector.

adhara doesn’t know vector. she’s not sure she wants to. he knows things, she thinks, he knows things and he knows he knows them.

they tell her they are at war. they tell her the enemy is coming for them. adhara doesn’t know how to fight, how to hurt, how to watch the light go in a person’s eyes. but she won’t tell them she isn’t a warrior. she’s already learned barians never turn their backs on one another.

+++++

she never really learns to duel. she doesn’t care for it. she doesn’t know why.

+++++

“me?”

“you,” durbe agrees. “go to earth, adhara. find the astral’s emissary.”

“and then?”

“and then get rid of it, adhara dear,” vector coos. his eyes are mocking.

durbe’s brow furrows angrily, but he says nothing. he just waits.

adhara looks at her hands. she’s learned a little combat, a little spycraft, a little tracking. but she hasn’t yet learned to hate. perhaps that’s why she’s always alone.

here, then, is her chance. she closes her eyes, nods.

+++++

she buys a pack of pens, a notebook, a camera, a tape-recorder. a printer. three hundred index cards and a map of the city. she doesn’t bother building a deck, not yet; she has no talent in dueling.

but she likes to ask questions. she likes to ride the train and blend into the crowd. she likes the elation of putting another pin on the map, piecing together a little more of the puzzle.

she tells the humans she meets she’s an investigative journalist, just come from a small town to the big city, and they love it. just like a movie, they tell her before they spill out their hearts for her. she takes to wearing the pens in her hair and learns to turn the recorder on without taking her hand out of her pocket.

adhara doesn’t know where she learned about journalists.

eventually a real newspaper hires her after she takes to selling her pictures to find her operation. she pens them columns that they rave over. she uses a fake name.

durbe never says anything when he checks in on her. but she can feel his approval when he runs his fingers over her inked-up map.

+++++

adhara has nightmares about pink hair and red eyes, small voices calling out to her for help.

she ignores them. they are not real.

+++++

“you found him?”

she nods. mizael hisses between his teeth and paces. he glances at durbe, who has a faraway look in his eyes, and at vector, who is lounging on the throne.

no one sits on that throne. it is nasch’s throne. adhara doesn’t like the implication.

“it’s time, then.” durbe sighs. “one of us will have to defeat him.”

looks are exchanged; alit and gilag emerge from the darkness to join them. they are deciding amongst themselves, with their secret eyes and their wordless gestures, and she is excluded. left out. abandoned, even though she has spent the past year collecting numbers and solving the mysteries of heartland city.

she does not wish to do it herself.

“i’ll do it.”

but they all look at her at once. mizael blinks. alit laughs.

adhara returns to earth, and tears down her maps, her notes, her everything. she throws it all away.

she writes how to kill an astral on a fresh sheet, pins it to the wall.

+++++

she doesn’t like it when children duel. it’s not safe.

+++++

“hey! lady!” a hand tugs at her sleeve. she turns. “do you know how to get to central station from here?”

it’s the boy. red eyes, pink hair, key around his neck, hope at his side. he glows to her alien sight. the blue light of astral behind him casts a strange light on everything.

here they are. the enemy.

“hey…what’s your name?”

“adhara.”

he’s wearing a duel disk. adhara is not. she has only the knife in her pocket and her wits.

she’s killed bugs before, for practice. she wonders how humans die, if they twitch, if they bleed.

“you look like someone i used to know,” the boy says. he stares.

she leads him away from the street, down a side alley into a deserted place, and then points. “that way.”

he walks, his back exposed to her. she hears vector’s voice in her mind: _a mistake._

the blade goes into the back of his neck cleanly. she hears the snap. the gasp. then nothing.

+++++

and then it all falls apart. he calls out a name, like her nightmare come to life.

+++++

vector is laughing. adhara — akari — runs.

+++++

the earth shakes. blood spatters against the windows like the rain used to do in a storm, and while pink lightning flashes, akari curls up under a blanket like she did when she was human, and a child, and afraid.

_well, daddy, i did what you wanted. i didn’t let yuuma duel._

the world is ending, and akari can’t bear the sight of her hands. she watches from the attic.

she waits.


End file.
